By Shiellah Sibanda| A Ministry of Health apartment building housing staff members in Gwanda was on Tuesday completely burnt down as the inept Municipality of Gwanda fire brigade failed yet again to deal with the fire.
Members of the public as ZimEye.com reveals, had to go inside the burning building and take the risk of dealing with the huge inferno to stop it reaching to other apartments housing about 60 families of the Ministry employees’.
The engine of the council fire truck which is said to be having state of the art equipment, is reported to have failed to start when an alarm was raised that the building was on fire. The fire team responded to the fire in a makeshift emergency support vehicle which did not have the capacity to deal with the inferno.
This is not the first time that the Gwanda Fire Brigade has failed to deal with a fire, in what has now invoked the residents’ anger.
Several public buildings and houses have been burnt down to ashes in the town with the fire team completely failing to handle the situation.
Speaking to ZimEye.com the Municipality Chief Fire Officer, Denny Sibanda said that his fire fighting team delayed attending to the fire due to a technical problem with their main fire truck.
“Our fire tender shockingly failed to start when we got the report of the fire though we tried our best to deal with the fire before it could spread to all the other apartments,” he said.
Sibanda said that they are still investigating the cause of the fire which they suspect to have been due to an electrical fault.
Thousands of dollars worth of property was completely burnt down leaving the staff member who was on duty at the hospital with nothing to salvage from the apartment.
Chief Medical Superintendent at the hospital Dr Puggie Chimberengwa lamented at the council failure to contain the fire before the apartment was completely burnt down.
“It’s sad that our employee has lost everything he had in the fire. The hospital will work at providing him with alternative accommodation,” he told ZimEye.
6 Replies to “BREAKING NEWS-Govt Building Burnt Down As Fire Brigade Fails To Start”
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It is not unique to Gwanda. Same in every city throughout Zimbabwe despite the “state of the arts” equipment. This should be one priority area for the Ministry of Local Government to look into. Deliberate sabotage of government efforts can come through this chink if it is not closed early. General Mujuru died in similar circumstances. Houses in Harare, Gweru, Mutare and Masvingo have gone down in blazes exactly the same way and in some cases in comical ways, e.g. fire tenders racing to scene of a fire and only discovering that they have no water when they get to the place !!!! What do they employ? Dead brain people? These weevils get paid every month end to do what? Play “draughts” while the country burns? This is the stuff that makes other foreign nations laugh at Africans.
Early this year we had two very beautiful grass thatched church structures burnt to ashes in Wallah Avenue in Mount Pleasant under the watchful eye of the Harare Fire Brigade. Its sad. I am sure Harare City as a council has not more than 4 working fire fighting equipment, yet across the Limpopo a small Municipality like Musina has more of such equipment, fire fighting, ambulances etc than the whole of Zimbabwe. Can one sue the council for failure to promptly respond and perform when called out for such emergencies.
well said blame shld not be put on the fire departments bt pple at the helm the council and govt just a few months back sum party was buying golf cars for youths instead of equippin fire services councils rush to buy expensive cars for their directors bt fail to buy one fiore engine eg a recondition dennis sabre goes for abt 5000 pounds surely its far much betta than relyn on donated phased out engine. wait til the dae properties of to mgt or gvt official is burnt down to ashes thus wr u wil c the importance of fire servce take a leaf from south africa or botswana. SIMPLY THE GVT AND COUNCIL TO BLAME FOR ALL THESE PROBS THAT AFFECT FIRE DEPT whish i cld sue them
Meaning someone should be shockingly fired.
This shows that fire team does not test their fire equipment at beginning of every shift of which they should notice during handover and takeover.
There you have it and it will only get worse the situation caused at council by Ncube and chingoome had reached
Amazing heights… All fire stations have no man power ( half per truck then stipulated )due to all experienced personnel leaving for UAE due to no salaries for months , no life insurance and NO MEDICAL cover despite paying Hammas every month. It’s only going to get worse … The trucks they have are second hand donations and as such also have short shelf life…. The sub stations in Harare drive to a public borehole to fill up the tanks in town. The main fire station relays on council water they dont have boreholes to fill up and seeing as residents abuse hydrants when they get to a fire they can’t get water from that hydrant. You will realise the importance of these emergency services personnel when something happens and they can’t do their job fully. Pls find out the Rot at council emergency services and expose it pls! And now the councilors relatives are being brought in as trainees it’s impossible for a school leaver who doesn’t have a relative to sign up.